


Getting used to

by Riemann_integrable



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blood, Blood and Gore, Hurt and dubious comfort, Kissing, Linhardt is Really Upset, M/M, Mild Fluff, Yeah that's as far as we go here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23805373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riemann_integrable/pseuds/Riemann_integrable
Summary: Linhardt's mentality isn't the most adjusted for taking lives. Having someone around who's the opposite isn't pleasant, per se, as much as it is necessary.
Relationships: Linhardt von Hevring/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 52





	Getting used to

**Author's Note:**

> (Linhardt I'm so sorry about this but my love for you gave me brain damage.)

The Officers’ Academy hall is dark. Red just doesn’t jump to the eye at this hour.

He leans back and shifts on the desk he’s sitting on. If there have been rare moments in his life where he’d had the genuine force and motivation to move, this isn’t one of them. There’s only a window behind his back — moonlight always feels so cold. It’s just an illusion of temperature but illusions are enough to give one goosebumps; the nonexistent breeze makes Linhardt feel those parts of his skin, the ones still slightly damp, delineated very clearly. His hair is sticking to his face. He doesn’t have it in himself to lift a hand and remove it, that would involve touching it. 

The rest of that scarce illumination ends up somewhere near the eyes fixed on him. It ends up on angular cheekbones and shoulder pieces and black leather. All very proper and orderly, nearly blending into the shadows behind, which is as typical as one can go. Hubert uncrosses his arms in his usual, unempathetic impatience.

“We have a battle tomorrow.” There are no other sentences he could have possibly said.

“I’m—” Linhardt’s breath hitches, then he exhales, “—well aware.”

“If you were, you would be in your chambers.” The uncanny green of Hubert’s eyes makes a rundown of him with some contempt. “And possibly getting changed.”

With some delay, that reminds Linhardt. He can’t stop the shiver from running through his entire body and resorts therefore to digging his nails into the edge of the desk until the splinters are nearly stuck under them. His alertness returns only gradually. In the silence of their old classroom at night, every single breath taken, all the tiny moves, make an unbearable noise.

Both of them, Linhardt reckons, share a troublesome degree of obstinacy. Hubert’s insistent standing before him and his own unwillingness to get up, the unstoppable force versus the unmovable object.

“Going to sleep doesn’t seem to motivate you, as you are. I have run out of options.” Hubert admits, then, with a sigh.

“You could,... simply,” it bubbles out of Linhardt, “just leave me here then.”

“Which would be the least beneficial for Her Majesty, given your role in the formation.”

“I don’t think I care.”

The bluntness has both of them taken aback. As much as Linhardt tends to nitpick, he prefers to be roundabout when he’s not so exhausted. Not sleepy,  _ exhausted _ exhausted, the visceral lack of energy when one’s brain can’t even give out the instructions anymore. Just like it can’t command Linhardt’s limbs to at least take off a damn overcoat soaked in blood.

Hubert’s eyes narrow, hopefully with a realization that this isn’t the usual bickering. His single step doesn’t make any sounds. One of those unsettling things he’s able to do.

“The harder we work, the sooner this will end.”

_ That’s right Hubert _ , Linhardt wants to say,  _ because convincing yourself that people dying left and right around you is the natural state of things can surely be done at the snap of a finger, through logical reasoning alone, why did I not think of that _ . He keeps quiet though. Maybe if he ignores the other man he will actually dissolve into the darkness or turn out to be some delirious apparition. In this brief pretense of being alone he turns a palm around, slowly, vision blurring a bit as it’s exposed to moonlight.

It’s turning more desaturated. At least that dampens the severity of the initial shock.

Something in his skin has gone too numb to feel the leather. He knows it’s there because he sees the glints of it. Linhardt breathes in with confusion.

“None of this…” A gloved thumb drags along the stain in the middle of his hand, as though it weren’t too dry to smear. “...is your responsibility.”

It’s somewhere between angering and bizarre that Hubert still sounds analytical along with that gesture; maybe it’s the only way he ever speaks. Linhardt doesn’t know why he’s trying to believe it. He acknowledges the proportions of his own mental strain when his shoulders tense up and his eyes begin to feel excessively dry. Shouldn’t have kept them open for so long, he ironizes internally. In all this, Hubert doesn’t look intent on unwrapping his fingers from his wrist.

“Or your fault” he adds to the previous phrase. A new attempt or a corrected wording.

His hand doesn’t convey any particular feeling of warmth. It is, though, the only hand here right now — they find themselves in each other’s company at the oddest times, regrettably. Linhardt makes eye contact for a mere moment before actively trying not to, feigning interest in the marble texture of the column in the background or insignificant details about Hubert like the misplaced hair on the right of his face. It looks freshly washed; he might have come straight out of the shower. 

“I don’t feel this way about it because I choose to” Linhardt says, melancholic and absentminded, because that’s how short-lived his anger is. 

(His mind doesn’t fixate on the feel of leather over his knuckles, only when it moves a little, somewhat close to a caress but within plausible deniability. It simply feels as though that’s not the wrong place for it to be.)

“So consider me—” He doesn’t expect his voice to crack. By the time he squeezes out an ‘ _ Unconvinced _ ’ he can feel the tears collecting and god, is it convenient that Hubert’s image of him is the one he cares about perhaps the least.

He doesn’t care — because the man murders in cold blood and has possibly committed everything unspeakable one could against another human being, and if there was a line not to be crossed it’s  _ not even in his field of vision anymore _ , but Linhardt almost forgets about all of it when Hubert strokes along his temple with his other hand. Takes one particularly matted lock and brushes it back into place. Tightens his grip around Linhardt’s wrist and leans a bit closer than expected.

Earlier that day he had stumbled back from an avoided swing of axe in clouds of battlefield dust, conjuring a spell in a panicked fight-or-flight reaction, and although he had shut his eyes, he lived and could open them again. The enemy had been split clean into two at the waist with a splatter of blood that ended up on Linhardt’s face — his nose, his chin, his mouth — the squelch of which rang in his ears for the next thirty minutes. 

He never cleaned it off, so it’s still there when Hubert kisses him.

The stains on his hand are from another soldier, younger and wielding a sword, inexperienced enough that a more precise and less painful spell had been enough to end him. Linhardt had aimed for his throat; only his right arm was close enough to get dirty but it serves as a reminder nonetheless. His hand goes limp in Hubert’s, fingers seeking to interlace with his.

There’s more of them. Way too many people. Linhardt tries to recount them and loses track when he feels the other’s lips along his jaw; those thin, startlingly human lips that could use being a bit less mechanical but at least,  _ at the very least _ , they aren’t irked. He’s one slip of self-control away from the ugliest cry of his life. Hubert pulls away with a crease of brows entirely impossible to decipher and rather than think about it Linhardt has a desperate need to bury his face into his shoulder — even though it’s uncomfortable with the iron pushing against his ear and when he sniffs to choke back more tears he anticipates to smell something clinical and noxious.

He doesn’t. Hubert really did just shower. Not that there was any point as, in letting Linhardt cling to him, he’s gotten blood all over himself. 

“And next time,” he says somewhere around the other’s nape, “I’ll see to it that the unsavory parts are taken care of before they befall on you. That’s my mistake alone.”

It receives a weak chuckle after a moment of silence. Linhardt returns to his usual demeanor, though bitingly sarcastic. 

“So people will still get killed and I just won’t know. That’s a relief, Hubert, my conscience is at rest.”

Linhardt grips his forearms, feeble, studying the pattern of smudges on the two of them. In the dim rays of the moon those irises are a tad too brightly green. They pierce right through whatever is left of Linhardt’s principles that hasn’t yet been replaced by apathy, as though he’s retorting  _ yes, that’s how it will be and I won’t sugarcoat it _ . 

It all really depends, he then realizes, on how much he’s aware of, because he doesn’t have the power to prevent this war anyway. He’s not the one making the moves here. He’s not Edelgard. It hardly prompts emotion in either direction though as a statement. Running away really was the best strategy after all — holding onto hopes of a greater good, no glances behind, lest they be forever damned to the underworld. And then somebody like Hubert will come around to make the mess vanish behind a veil and stifle his protests with a coldly impersonal kiss. 

“You ought to clean up.”

Linhardt snaps out of it.

“Yes,” he says, contained, “you’re right. It’s starting to get nauseating.”

They’re soon out of sight; nothing but vague, sluggish shapes in the shadows. With that, all colour vanishes from the scenery.


End file.
